Chapter 196:
An Apex Predator
GIA WAS ON TO ME. Well, it’s not like I didn’t notice.
“Don’t put words in my mouth,” Yulan muttered.
“Oh dear. Did the word using offend you?”
“I never lied to you, you know.”
“Fair point.”
Gia’s predatory grin vanished, and his usual flippant aura returned. His expressions always changed rapidly, yet they were all surely genuine. Unlike Yulan, he didn’t don a mask.
“Oh—I ain’t mad, by the way,” Gia added.
“Do you think I care if you are?”
“Nah.”
Gia plopped down on the windowsill and rested his feet on a nearby desk. He set his feet wide apart, arms clasping his knees, in a way that seemed distastefully ill-suited to the atmosphere.
“You said we’re friends. That’s all ya really did,” he said.
More accurately, Yulan had only told someone else that he was friends with Prince Gia. That was the former head of the Vahan family—Violette’s grandfather.
“Doing so was more effective than I ever could have dreamed. Thank you for that,” Yulan said.
“Funny. Ya don’t look very thankful.”
Yulan surely understood Sina’s significance as a nation better than Gia did. The island empire, which was surrounded by ocean, rejected other nations’ influence. For years, they’d preserved and nurtured their own independent culture and environs. Many other nations had tried to find a foothold in Sina through various means, but they’d all failed.
But I’m friends with the royal prince, a personification of Sina itself. That fact was more useful to a man than any gift could possibly be, although simple friendship didn’t necessarily confer any further benefits; there was no guarantee that their connection would be advantageous to Duralia. For that matter, Yulan had never expected Gia to suddenly bring up the friendship. Not even today.
Despite all those uncertainties, Yulan’s “friendship” with Gia was a hope worth clinging to. The empire of Sina was that important.
“So, what brought this on?” Yulan asked. “Are you seriously implying that I want to bridge the gap between Sina and Duralia?”
“Ha ha! No chance in hell. You’d never help this kingdom of your own free will.”
“The same is true of you. Creating bonds between nations sounds like a boring headache with no upside.”
“Well, yeah… It would be a headache,” Gia acknowledged. “It wouldn’t have to be boring, though. It could be fun.”
He smirked as innocently as a little boy who’d just set a trap. It was the smile of a man who measured his entire life in “fun.” He applied that metric to others’ lives too.
“You have no designs on my country, I know that,” he continued. “You just dropped my name to get what you wanted. Ya got no actual intention of exploitin’ it further. That’s why you don’t want to give Duralia’s higher-ups the slightest indication that you’ll fulfill their hopes. Shame, really. Your connection with my empire could serve as a pretty powerful trump card for you.”
As Gia drawled on, his tone of voice and the look in his eye were the same as always. Yet the young prince leaning back in his seat before Yulan’s eyes now practically seemed like a being from another dimension.
“Sure, but that doesn’t concern me,” Yulan answered curtly.
Gia’s disheveled school uniform, traditional Sinan accessories, skin and hair color—everything about him was foreign in Duralia, which was what made him so eye-catching. He obeyed no one and looked down on everyone—that was embedded in his lineage.
He was arrogant and insolent, narcissistic and vain, audacious and outrageous. He disregarded everyone and was bound by no one, yet his sheer existence entranced everybody.
The sweet, adorable smile on his face—one without a trace of kindness or softness—was the furthest thing from Duralian. Still, Gia’s was the face of a prince.